THE FUTURE OF CAPE COLONY. 405 



Africa, and it may be hoped that Adamastor and his 

 malignant destinies have disappeared finally and for 

 ever. It is not to be imagined that the Batavian 

 Government had, before the coming of the British, 

 an easy or unquestioned sway over the Boers of the 

 Colony. On the contrary, the absurd and arbitrary 

 restrictions of succeeding Governors had more than 

 once goaded the rugged farmers of the distant 

 frontiers into insurrection, or something very near 

 it. In 1795, the colonists of Graaff Reinet and 

 Swellendam actually expelled the landdrosts and 

 declared themselves independent. It has been 

 suggested that these farmers may have been attracted 

 and imbued by the spread of revolutionary principles, 

 at that time flooding France and other parts of 

 Europe. To those who know the Boers and their 

 isolation, this assumption is in the last degree 

 improbable ; these graziers of the wilderness were 

 at that time, as indeed they are to this day, 

 completely shut off from the outer world, and having 

 no external communication with it whatever. 



At this conjuncture the British Government 

 came to the assistance of the Dutch authorities, 

 and with the consent of the Prince of Orange, 

 their Stadtholder, then a fugitive in England from 

 the armies of Napoleon, took possession of the 

 Cape in the name of George III. 



Upon their entry into the Cape territories, the 

 British found their new subjects surrounded on 

 every side by a network of absurd and antiquated 

 and most vexatious laws. There is, perhaps, no 

 more striking example of the rooted antipathy of 

 the Dutch colonists to any sort of change, however 

 necessary or favourable to themselves, than the 



